Cuauhtli, the eagle, carries the sun in Mexica belief, and eagle warriors, the second of the two most prestigious military orders alongside the jaguar knights, carried its name into battle; the day reads as brave, high reaching and proud, an augury of ambition matched to the bird's own visible mastery of the sky above every other creature in the count. Sahagun's informants tempered the augury with a caution familiar from the count's other powerful animal signs: boldness under this sign runs to excess, and what the eagle takes it must also be able to hold, a warning that ambition without the strength to sustain its gains would end in a fall rather than a triumph.
A day of ambition by the fuller reading, Cuauhtli's association with the sun's own daily flight across the sky gave the sign a cosmic register beyond the merely military, since the sun's journey was, in Mexica theology, sustained only through the nourishment of sacrifice, so an eagle day's ambition carried, even if only implicitly, the same demand for real cost matched to real gain that governed the sun's survival itself. The sign opens Trecena 19, where Xochiquetzal's patronage extends this same theme of ambition and its price across the whole thirteen day week.